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Sibling Rivalry
By: Miriam Bellamy, LMFT
Hal Runkel, author of ScreamFree Parenting: Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool, teaches that your children’s sibling relationships are where they cut their relational teeth. There’s bound to be swelling and redness, gnashing and screaming, and perhaps even an abundance of drooling, but with non-reactive leadership from parents, children are more likely to become capable of enjoying solid relational foods for the rest of their lives. One of the life lessons my girls are learning right now is guilt by association. Their fighting has reached a whole new level of late and the bickering is almost constant. I have let them know that when their fighting reaches a decibel or violence level that I do not feel comfortable with (i.e. I don’t want to hear it any more!) they will both have consequences. My most important job in all this is to remain calm while I let the consequences do the screaming. It looks something like this: They arrive at the breakfast bar and Ella (5) is incensed that Hannah (7) wants to sit next to her. Ella demands Hannah move. Hannah says her feelings are hurt and refuses to move – in fact – she usually moves her chair closer to Ella’s – just to prove her point. Ella then gets down and moves to the table. Hannah then follows her. Ella starts screaming. Usually then Ella hits Hannah. Hannah starts whimpering but continues to egg Ella on by staring at her inches away from her face, etc. At this point I’m ready to actually enjoy my breakfast so I let them know I’m setting a timer for 1 minute. They have 60 seconds to fight with each other and I encourage them to ramp it up a bit. If they start up again after the timer beeps – they both lose play dates or T.V. time or computer time (sometimes they have to clean each other’s rooms).
It doesn’t matter who “starts” it because, as Hal teaches, our job as parents is to care about the whole process. Guilt by association. If your child gets in the car with someone in high school who happens to have drugs in their car and they get pulled over, the police don’t care if the drugs aren’t your child’s drugs. They don’t care “who started it”. All involved must face the consequences. And none of this lesson learning would be possible if I decided to scream at my children for being so darn noisy or so darn mean to each other. It’s all about the pause between my initial emotional reaction of annoyance and my subsequent actions. The pause lets me ask myself the question: What kind of parent – what kind of person do I want to be in this moment? I’m hoping that by taking a pause my children will be more likely to enjoy solid relational foods in all of their significant relationships to come, including the one they have with me now.
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